Field Trip Day

I went to The Middle City for two reasons. First, mw invited me. Second, I misread my residency renewal notice and when I read it properly, I realized that I had already passed the deadline. For beaurocratic reasons, I have to do all that down south, because the Taipei office won't talk to me. The information for what I needed to bring on the renewal notice contradicts what's on their English language website, which also contradicts what's on the Mandarin website, which contracts what's on the forums. So, I loaded my suitcase up with every document I've ever owned, and lzyk's as well, and took the early train. This meant that I missed the Lord's Team take our Holy Revenge on the Blue Heathens, or whatever those offbrand rednecks are calling themselves.

I was about 90 minutes late to meet mw, because of train delays and scheduling errors, but when I got there, he wasn't too pissed. We chatted for a bit under clear blue skies ( ! ) at one of the best spots in the world. 

We warmed up on an uneven flatground circle just barely inside a large park. It has a red rail around it, that mw *****d, despite the awkward tile uneven tile landing. A couple of families came up, including the newest local skater, who had just received his first skateboard for his birthday the day before. His dad was Canadian, and we all chatted and skated flatground for a while. 

The park is surrounded by yellow brick sidewalks, and a round granite coping. The yellow bricks make a mellow miniramp up to the coping from the sidewalk, about waist high. From the North corner of the park, it's a slight downhill for about a minute. You still have to push, but it's not bad at all. The long wave of miniramp ebbs and flows like a friendly little breaker at the beach. Down at the bottom, the granite coping grinds, and is featured in plenty of local footage. The waxed part is slicker than metal on top, but grinds more like normal stone on the side (it's really wide, like an ten inch semi circle of stone). This can get tricky, if you transition from the side to the top. I slammed and am nursing a sore lower back. 

Crowds of people were picnicking at the park, and cheered us on. Right as we were really getting going, a half dozen locals showed up. They were Indonesians, and we had a pretty significant language barrier. I got the impression they hadn't skated the spot before, and they couldn't **** *** **** on it at first, but mw taught them how. Within a few hours, they were ********** it, which pissed me off, because I never got one, and that's what I wanted to do there. Actually, I wasn't pissed at all; it was delightful to skate with them. 

The spot has been improved by a ubike station that now prevents skateboards from shooting out into the road. Taiwanese people would cheer me and mw, but glower at the Indonesians. One concerned citizen even shouted at them, because a skateboard bumped a Ubike's tire. I've heard that Asian immigrants get treated differently from western ones, but that was the first time I've seen the difference so starkly. 

We had planned to skate other spots, but the crew and the spot were so fun that we just stayed there til we all skated back to the station through the buses and traffic. Indonesians have no fear of death by auto. 

I stayed with the inlaws and went to talk to the government the next morning. The guy at the counter insisted that my residency authorization renewal wasn't late, even though I was holding a piece of paper that said it was, sent from his office, probably by him. All the paperwork and documentation I had spent so much time collecting was ignored, and he just wanted my ID and passport and some money. Easy enough, but I wonder what it would have been like were I Indonesian...